Dear Ubuntu developers, I am Yang Jie, a 2nd-year MSc student in Xi'an Jiaotong University from China. I am especially interested in the project of GNOME centralized file sharing administration and want to apply for this project. <div> </div><div>It has been multiple years since I had chosen Ubuntu as my major OS due to its humanized and convinence( of course, another important reason is that it's a Linux OS). I had got some opportunities to handle some administration tasks based both on Ubuntu Server & Desktop Edition, when I contributed a file server with samba & nfs, so I have had some basic knowledge about them. Additional, my group do researches mostly on Linux, and I have some experience on Open Source projects as well as a strong background of C++ & Perl, so I think I am fit for this job. The link of my proposal on the Ubuntu wiki is as follows: <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GSoC/2010/YangJie" target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GSoC/2010/YangJie</a> </div><div> </div> <div>Be so kind to give me any adivce, please! Your advices will considerably encourage me. I will be keeping on with the improvement of my proposal, to make it as clear and proper as possible. I will try my best to give a humanized file sharing administration tool with quality, as my contribution to Ubuntu. I am the one for it! The following is an abstract and some teasers of my proposal: Abstract In this proposal, an extendible GNOME centralized file sharing administration tool is designed. It provides a uniform UI just like Nautilus to browse and control the shared/sharable directories based on protocols, which gives users a humanized interface to manage their sharing intuitively and conveniently. The tool works based on a set of Schema files in which record the necessary properties, scripts and service libraries of specified protocols, and the whole configuration work flow is managed by a configuration manager implemented from a uniform interface, also based on specified protocols. Both of the above features make it easy and convenient to add new protocols to this tool, making it a extendible architecture for long time evolution. How will the tool serve for users & developers? <div>1. The centralized file sharing manager has a main workspace similar with nautilus and a administration tool with individual interface. File sharing tasks are carried out as the following method: Any of the mounted network places through Samba/NFS are detected and shown in the workspace of this tool, just like the style of nautilus. Users click on a mount point to open nautilus and browse the files or right click on it to get the details.</div><div>2. People also use the menu bar or context menu in the tool to open the administration tool, in which users setup some parameters and mount a new network place. The required parameters, such as protocols, URLs, folder path and mount points and so on, are all given through a dialog box. Note that currently only samba and NFS is supported.</div><div>3. Support for certain protocols should be designed as module, so that the future work on extend for other protocols are easy to be carried out.</div> A tentative project architecture ! <ol type="1"><li>My experience considered, I choose Perl as my main language, <a class="http" href="http://gtk2-perl.sourceforge.net/">gtk2-perl</a> as the graphical library to develop the GUI and Moose as the OO framework when developing the backend; </li><li>The tool will be completed after 2 months with the 1st alpha version, the tool will be able to support Samba and NFS file sharing; </li><li>The tool setup the configurations based on a set of Schema files. These files are all XML files. According to the configuration files of a specified protocol, Those files record the necessary properties in the conf file and their meta-properties, scripts, and deb libraries to install the services. The Schema file is the base of this tool; </li><li>There are three levels in the design of its architecture. <ul><li>The UI level has three modules. The main workspace is where the shared directories are mounted and shown automatically and most operations towards sharing directories take place. The administration tool is a dialog box, in which users are able to add or remove a shared URL, share directories with specified protocol in their computers and do other necessary configurations. The Schema Viewer shows schema file of specified protocol in a humanized style. </li><li>The Protocol Management level is where the configuration takes place. Four modules handle the task. File Manager handles all the file operations; Schema Helper analyzes Schema files to generate the property hash table; Config Manager is a kernel module in this level. It decides the work flow according to the requirement of the current protocol, and updates the hash table according to user operation; Service Manager is called to execute scripts or manages the deb libraries if necessary. </li><li>The last level is the file system level, in which the Schema file is the most important. As stated, Schema files record the properties and other required information. Other important elements are the controlled objects such as services, shared URLs and the deb libraries. </li></ul></li></ol>Milestones of the project <ul><li>Week 1-2: Get more information on Samba and <a class="http" href="http://gtk2-perl.sourceforge.net/">gtk2-perl</a>. </li><li>Week 3-5: Start with a read-only GUI towards samba sharing configurations. </li><li>Week 6-10: Add to the function of reading the NFS sharing configurations; Make it enable to modify those configurations to manage the sharing. </li><li>Week 10-12: Write the documentation and submit the project; tackle bugs and submit patches. </li></ul> Thank you for all ! Best wishes! </div> -- Yang Jie（杨杰） <a href="http://hi.baidu.com/thinkdifferent" target="_blank">hi.baidu.com/thinkdifferent</a> Group of CLOUD, Xi'an Jiaotong University Department of Computer Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University PHONE: 86 1346888 3723 TEL: 86 29 82665263 EXT. 608 MSN: <a href="mailto:xtyangjie2004@yahoo.com.cn" target="_blank">xtyangjie2004@yahoo.com.cn</a> once i didn't know software is not free; then i knew it days later; now i find it indeed free.